I am hoping that, by the time you read this, Ward Churchill will no longer be employed by the State of Colorado. For those of you unfamiliar with the current flap, this WND article gets to the point, and includes links to previous articles about the controversy.
Here is my $0.02 worth:
As part of my undergraduate experience, I, like just about every other young skull of mush these days, was forced to undergo indoctrination take a class on multicultural studies. I took Indian Studies because it was the only thing open at the time. Note that it is "Indian Studies." Apparently, they decided that "Native American" was insulting because they aren't "Americans" so now the P.C. police have deemed that we go back to calling them "Indians." I don't understand it, either. Anyway, the writings of Ward Churchill made up a huge part of the class. I could tell then that this guy was a communist sociopath with no grasp whatsoever on reality. I dug into his record back then, and even then I was amazed to learn that a person with no Ph.D. could become the chair of the ethnic studies department at a major university and provide the dogma for classrooms across the nation. I raised hell in that class, and still got an A because the Professor could find no way to refute what I said (after all, we all have to be tolerant of other people's different multicultural views).
So I hope that by the time you read this, the university has agreed to fire Churchill.
And don't even attempt to talk to me about censorship, the First Amendment, free speech, academic freedom, or tenure. If you try to, you will only demonstrate your ignorance.
This is not a free speech issue. Ward Churchill is free to stand on top of the Empire State Building and yell out at the top of lungs to the people of New York that the victims of 9/11 had it coming for being little Eichmanns. No one wants to deny Churchill this right. But with rights come responsibilities. Your freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment will protect you against prior restraint by the government. But this is not an issue of prior restraint. Churchill used his soapbox. He said what he wanted to say. Now he must live with the consequences.
Do you think you have unlimited freedom of speech? If so, try walking up to your boss, preferably in the middle of a big company meeting, and telling him to go f*** himself. Then count to ten. That's about how long it will take for your boss to tell you to pack up your stuff and leave. You will find yourself out of work. This is not censorship. This is a consequence. This is what is happening to Ward Churchill. You see, his bosses are the university regents, the state government, and the taxpayers of Colorado. And he pissed them off. It is their right to fire him for it, just as it would be their right to fire him if he came to work naked, spat on the university president, and made suggestive comments about female students and a goat. Would the university then be justified in firing him? You betcha! There is no difference.
And it's not about academic freedom. Academic freedom is about having the ability to express new ideas. It doesn't mean anyone has to take them seriously. Sometimes not taking the new idea seriously is a mistake. Look at Galileo. But sometimes, having the new idea gets you laughed off the campus for good reason. Imagine the astrophysics professor today who tries to tell you that the Earth really is flat and Galileo really was wrong all along. Would you want this person teaching astronomy to your kids? Would you want your tax dollars paying his salary? Would you fight to keep him on staff as a tenured professor? I wouldn't, and neither should you.
And about that tenure: no one ever said that tenure meant "job for life without liability or responsibility." In contract law, we learn on day one that a contract (such as an employment contract with a tenure agreement) must have three things to be legally enforceable: offer, acceptance, and consideration. What that means is: someone has to make an offer (something for something in return), someone else has to accept that offer, and there must consideration (something of value in exchange for something else of value). Where there is only consideration on one side of the equation (i.e., something of value in exchange for nothing), then what you have is simply a gift. Gifts are not enforceable by any law; there is nothing legally anyone can do to enforce a promise to make a gift. That's not a contract.
Now let's examine tenure. Most professors with tenure will try to tell you that it means a guarantee of employment to protect the free thinking professors from being fired for producing new, radical, unpopular ideas. This is supposed to encourage people to think outside the box, to come up with new discoveries, and not fear retribution if it turns out the new idea is flawed. That much sounds good. But what are really talking about? It's an employment contract. Now, if you agree to work for the school, and the school agrees to pay you, you have offer (usually the school offering you a job), acceptance (usually you agreeing to work there), and consideration (they pay you, you produce work). So, what happens if you fail to produce work? You have failed to live up to your end of the bargain and broken the contract.
If there were nothing the school could do to get rid of you, then, when you think about it, there is no consideration on one end of the bargain. If you don't have to produce actual valuable work in exchange for your continued employment, then your continued employment is really nothing more than a gift from the school. And a gift is not a contract and is not legally enforceable. So if you stop working, there is nothing legally to bind the school to go on giving you employment. In other words, tenure, as most people would define it, is no contractual protection at all--if you fail to produce valuable work. So what is work?
Well, in the case of a professor at a university, "work" would mean "teaching students the subject you were hired to teach in a manner consistent with a university education." So... what has Ward Churchill been teaching? If he was hired to teach students that America is an evil monster that should be stricken from the planet, then maybe he has a case. But I am guessing that was not on the minds of the regents when they offered him tenure. So if it were up to me, it would be clear that he has unilaterally broken his employment contract, making it a simple thing for the school to fire him, regardless of tenure.
Now surely every tenured professor who reads this will cringe. A few might even reply to the comments in a hateful leftist fashion. I don't care. I think tenure has become a blight on our educational infrastructure whereby bad teachers can sit securely in their ivory towers without accountability, free to spew out nonsense to generation after generation of students, who become dumber and dumber every term. Precedent-setting decisions that make tenure more fragile will only make professors more aware of their responsibilities. Without the artificial protection of tenure, professors will have to be more competitive in order to stay employed. That means doing a better job of instructing and producing real results in research. The kids will learn more and society as a whole will benefit.
So please, if you are on the board of regents, FIRE WARD CHURCHILL.
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